First Approach: Low-Cost Giveaway
The team’s first, and more traditional, approach to promoting the new interface was to offer an inexpensive giveaway to all customers, including students. The team wanted the item to feature more than just the name and URL of the OPAC.
The team chose sticky pads (a generic version of Post-It Notes) to convey the message. The design featured the words “New Addison” in bold, with the tagline “You’ve never seen a library catalog like this.” The web address for Addison was on the next line. Around the border of the sticky notes, eight brief bullet points about new Addison features could pique a user’s interest. A faded version of the University Libraries logo filled the background of the sticky notes’ writing area. Two thousand sticky pads cost $789.
The team began handing out the pads during Virginia Tech’s Move-In Week, the week prior to the start of the fall semester when most of the student population returns to campus. The new Addison was a primary focus in the library’s canopy on a pedestrian mall. Library personnel distributed library literature and free lemonade to passersby. More than 350 students received library information during the three days on the mall. Most took one or more sticky pads.
More pads reached the community during a week-long “Addison tour” two weeks into the semester. Two library staff members with a book cart, balloons, and promotional materials visited a different spot on campus for three hours each day. The library table averaged about sixty visitors per day.
A passive approach worked to distribute the rest of the sticky pads. During the first week of the semester, the outreach librarian placed about five Addison sticky pads next to each of the library’s sixty-plus computers. Most disappeared within a few days. Distribution within the first semester was a priority, given that Addison could only be “new” for so long.
Second Approach: Valuable Prizes
The marketing team spent the rest of its $1,500 on prizes for a contest that would introduce students to the new OPAC. The team chose to purchase iPods because of their strong appeal to the student population. Library student workers, when asked what type of prize would induce them to participate in the contest, chose iPods. The marketing team purchased four iPods for $626.
To be eligible to win an iPod, students had to answer four multiple- choice questions (correctly using the new Addison. The team, which wanted students to be pleased with their experience in the new OPAC, designed a set of easy questions that would highlight new features in Addison. An optional, open-ended question concluded the entry form: “We’re interested in your opinions about the new Addison. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding the catalog, please enter them here.” Virginia Tech’s web-based surveying tool enabled the creation of the contest entry form.
Next came the hard part: attracting entrants. Publicity for the contest centered on an image of the Hokie Bird (the Virginia Tech mascot) wearing an iPod, created by library staff member Robert Sebek. The graphic mirrored the silhouette images that had gained popularity in iPod television advertisements. The team included this image on all publicity materials — postcard-sized fliers taped next to the computers in the library and handed to students during outreach events, large posters hung from the library canopy during Move-In Week, and a student newspaper advertisement.
Sebek, a library news administrator, also maintained a link to the contest in the library announcements section of the home page. Other routes for publicizing the contest included a public service announcement (PSA) on the campus radio station and fliers sent to all dormitory resident assistants, in the hope that they would pin the fliers to their bulletin boards.
The contest opened on August 17, five days before classes started, and entries slowly trickled in — fifty over the first five days. The goal for the contest, one thousand entries, seemed far away.